Continuation of an odyssey

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I made two trips to bLowes and Home Despot as it is. I bought a deck box and two wall sheds (yay! On sale)... Plus 30 ft of corregated drain pipe to make a French Drain. I suspect that I will find out how in works, tonight or tomorrow with the remnants of Hurricane Lorena.... Also put the Kasa Smart switch into a plastic box outside of the Intermatic box so it actually works... So I Alexafied the light too.

But I couldn't convince the wife to let me throw in a couple pieces of ABS to float test. I probably will have to let my wife buy a commercial reel, but I am thinking of cutting a "straight" piece and using the reel for that and building an ABS frame for the two bump outs that will be left behind.

I bought an ABS coupler but it's apparently not "foam core". It sank. :)IMG_20190922_171546392.jpg

30' of "French Drain" in place with about 3 tons of gravel on it...
 
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I guess we will find out if it works.. There is a flash flood watch for the area from 6 PM to 8 PM tomorrow. One more hard work day and I should have it finished. Unfortunately that probably won't be until next weekend...

Pool is remarkably well balanced so far on its own. I am still using the Trichlor tabs the start up guy put in because the CYA is still a little low for Tucson.
 
Well, believe it or not, it is a lot better, but I need to make another 30' French Drain (or drain tile for us Midwesterners) and gutters on the house. It never ends. I can't go to work today, there are no passable roads to Tucson from Corona de Tucson at present. I actually did run for our HOA board and I am worried that I can't make it to the meeting at 4 PM. Hopefully I lost! :)

One serious question for the group. Rain gauges here are reading between 3 and 4" of rainfall since last night. The water level in the pool is almost to the coping. Should I plan on draining some water?

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Why I think I should jackhammer out another drain from this side of the pool...

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Pool seems fine but it probably will be freezing cold to swim in. At least I had a couple of weeks this year...
 
I’d drain some personally. You are fine at the moment but also prone to flash floods whether they are on the radar or not.
 
The soil is so hard here that a dry well would be excruciatingly difficult to dig here. The hole in the wall is too far up. The PB promised to drill holes in the wall last Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. No show any time. Claimed that they broke the drilling rod. It's draining at the block they put up 5" above the surface. There is a deep wash behind that little piece of fence at the end that we would call a drainage ditch in the Midwest. So what I can get in there or routed to the front of the house would help. I would be in bad shape if things were as they were before we started the pool.

My biggest concern now is that the GFCI is tripping on the pool light but I suspect since it's right under and eve that isn't big enough, that water is in the box. I can't do anything about it until it stops raining. The Hayward pump is still running though.

I will drain the pool. It's basically up to the coping now, but it will be really difficult until it stops for the day.
 

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Hmm... In general if Wilmot isn't passable, neither is Sahuarita by Country Club. The long way, Sahuarita to 83 is, however.. And likely that will be the way I go in a few minutes.

But to further answer the dry well question, I have a picture of what's over that last section of the fence. One they drill a couple of holes in the fence footer, and I add another drain towards the house I should be good. Water also definitely got into the Intermatic box, so that is why the light GFCI is tripping. There was a puddle in the bottom of the box when I opened it. The sun shade I build for the equipment will be a solid sloped roof.

I will, if I am lucky get in exactly one hour of work today. Unless I go back in after the meeting and do a partial second shift. Maybe I should. IMG_20190924_123051622.jpgIMG_20190924_123004528.jpgIMG_20190924_123117684.jpg
 
So.. the rain got into the Intermatic panel and into the "Water Resistant" GFCI that the electrician put in and smoked it. I initially blamed myself because I moved the rocker switch for the light from inside the panel to another plastic box above the plastic box that held the GFCI and it seems the thing didn't completely seal (Neither did the electricians box, though). However that really doesn't explain how a puddle was at the bottom of the box because the hole into the plastic box I added is a 1" diameter hole that has a 3/4" ID fitting in it, and a box with a lid over it. There may have been a slight gap on the gasket but the water shold collect at the bottom of the box (it did). So I don't think the water got in via my work.. and it's odd that a "WR" GFCI couldn't handle a small amount of moisture. So I need to figure out where the water came from. I will probably build a small roof over it (I was planning on doing that anyway to shade the equipment from the sun) and put gutters on the house over it, but if there is someplace in the box I can put rubber washers that might happen too.

The ("indoor only") TP-Link Kasa switch is fine, and I assume the pool light is okay as well but I will know on the weekend.

I thought those Intermatic boxes were rated for that service, but I suspect that water literally got blown in from the sealed front door. There is no gasket on the door...

$20 for a new WR rated GFCI. I'll install when it stops raining on Friday. All it ever does here in Arizona is rain! :) The old one lasted about 3 weeks. Welcome to pool ownership, I suppose.. :)

Kim was correct in that the rainwater pushed up the pH substantially but since the TA is still about 150, that's a good thing. I was amazed that my CYA went from 30 ppm to 20 though (which is why I am still using trichlor, by the way.. I might as well until I get to about 50), so I must have gained a significant amount of water. I've not drained it yet, however because I need to pump out the wash I had. The drainage worked extremely well, and was only hampered by the dam that the brick wall created. If I can ever get the PB back to finish it I should have a "good enough" situation with that for the first time since I bought the property.

The really nasty thing is that, since I decided to leave the cover off (not that it mattered) and the rain was 65F.. the pool is now at 75F. So I suppose the season is over. And somehow the solar cover ended up having a small melted hole in one of the ends. I've not cut it yet so it will be okay. But yeah. I have to figure out how to make it much less of a PITA really soon.

Again I am almost done with this as a construction thread, but these are the sort of things that happen immediately after the water goes in.. so I might diary this until I get the last stuff done (or not, it sure seems) by the PB, and the last of the landscaping work done for the season. a few more days max.
 
Plenty of things come up the first year or two, and the best laid plans either go unused or dont work as planned. keep it going for the full journey.
 
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I havent changed climates but i seem to like it a tad warmer each year getting older. I still dont like over 85 but under 75 isnt as much fun as it once was.
 
Except for monsoon here, which still is not bad, 100F here is much more comfortable than 85F is in the East and Midwest. Even during monsoon the dewpoints rarely exceed 60F. I don't miss 90% humidity all the time, that is for sure. But you do get used to it and 40F then sure feels cold...
 
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So.. I had to work a half day yesterday because of getting stuck at home because no road out of Corona de Tucson was passable until 1 PM on Tuesday.

I thought that would give me at least four hours to work. Ran to bLowes first and got some stuff to fix the water getting into the GFCI and these.. IMG_20190928_161725019.jpg

Yes there is the proof that "cellular core" ABS does indeed float. My wife insisted on buying a commercial solar cover roller so I had her buy a solar roller. It is pretty lightly built and the rumors of them being very responsive to their customers hasn't been true for me so far. But the ABS is to tie the two sections of the cut cover together.

Anyway, do you guys know how a car battery fails in Arizona? In the Midwest the car gets hard to start as it gets cold out. In Arizona it is fine in the morning, at work, at Lowe's and then at Circle K across the street from Lowe's, it catastrophically fails. Apparently that is how batteries fail here. Once I got my wife out, I went across the street to Walmart and bought another set of tools I already have somewhere and a battery. Car was fine after that. Didn't get home until after dark.

This morning I did a full TF-100 test. Darn, those Trichlor tabs raise CYA fast. I was hoping to get maybe another week out of them before I had to switch to Liquid Chlorine but it's at 40 now... I might want to get it up a little more but not until spring. I start Liquid Chlorine on Monday I think, once the tablets are fully dissolved. Other than that I have good balance. I am a tad bit low on CH (200) but it goes up fast here so I am not going to add any... It's close enough. Otherwise CSI has been between +/- 0.1 so far.

Then I fixed the electrical. There was literally rust in the GFCI. They really believe that it never rains here. I moved it outside of the Intermatic box... It should be okay in its own box.

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I added some window weatherstripping to the door of the Intermatic box. Hopefully this will hold it until I add gutters above it. Now Alexa can control my Hayward LED through the TP-Link Kasa switch again... The electrician put in a Siemens breaker in that box only rated for Square D Homeline breakers on the light but not the dual gang on the pump. So at some point I am going to have to get a 15A Homeline breaker and do it right. The GFCI looked like a Leviton, but taking it out it was a Chinese clone of a Leviton. I give that guy a D, honestly. He also used EMT above ground outside which is legal but tacky...

As I was doing that the guy finally showed up to jackhammer and core out the wall for drainage. He didn't have the tools to cut the rebar, but I will hit it with an angle grinder tomorrow. I need to probably put a pipe in there and maybe mortar it in.. With a cap on it. But that should fix the drainage greatly.

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I also built the deck box. I think I am going to put together one of the sheds tonight too. Tomorrow 7 more tons of gravel.

There is a lot of work to do in most cases to finish off a pool so like I said... As a public service I won't cut this thread off yet... :). I still have another drain tile run to do, gutters to put up and landscaping and irrigation to do.
 
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